Vision

Green Desert Sanctuary Vision

The vision of Green Desert Sanctuary encompasses many sustainable facets. As stewards of the earth, we take responsibility for making better choices in our lives and how we obtain healthy foods for our family and community. We teach classes on all aspects of homestead sufficiency and real food production, including chicken raising, gardening, and natural building. We enjoy sharing our experience and also appreciate learning opportunities from people who come to visit our farm.

The Church Farm:

At the farm we grow our own organically or naturally produced fruits and vegetables for our own consumption and also share the abundance with the local community in the form of giveaways, direct farm stand sales and/or community supported agriculture shares. Work-Trade shares are also available, providing learning opportunities as well as food. Farm crops include not only fruits and vegetables that thrive locally, but also plants that may need a little season extension in the form of row covers and greenhouses. Ideally we would like to have several greenhouses on site for these purposes.

The working church farm raises livestock for human consumption. Currently we have chickens, turkeys, and meat rabbits in breeding programs to create sustainable flocks and herds that can be harvested in the near future. Our poultry are allowed free range opportunities and supplemented with certified organic local feed. We currently have fresh eggs available daily. We are considering raising lamb as a healthy alternative to beef. We do not raise cattle. All of the livestock produced for food are either processed and eaten at the farm, or sold to individuals to be processed at their own discretion. We foresee partnering with a commercial processing facility to handle bigger orders.

At this time, we have dairy goats for milk production. The goats are allowed pasture grass and supplemented with hay and/or alfalfa, and organic grain when in milk.  We milk daily and have fresh raw goat’s milk available. We offer dairy goat shares and make goat cheese from the milk. The offspring of the dairy goats are sold or traded in the local community. As funds allow, we are building a separate dairy barn to milk and house the dairy goats in.

Also at the farm, we have llamas (and one alpaca) as fiber animals and utilize their manure in our gardens. The llama manure is an excellent fertilizer that can be sold and used by the community. The llamas are guardians for the farm and we plan to train them for use as pack animals.  We would like to utilize the llama fiber as a local source of material to make rugs, blankets and clothing for ourselves and for the community. We are still learning how to process and work with the fiber and acquiring the necessary equipment as funds allow. Llamas and alpacas are well suited to the high desert climate in which we reside. It is important, as a sustainable farm, that we choose to raise livestock that fit within the environment that we have chosen to farm in.

We also plan to include an apiary, as bees offer many benefits. Primarily useful for increasing fertility of the farm and gardens, they would also produce volumes of raw honey which we could offer to the community. With appropriate funds for the necessary equipment, we expect to include bees in our farming as soon as we can.

We foresee a working herb garden at the farm to be used in culinary and medicinal uses. A natural building can be constructed to allow herbs and flowers to hang undisturbed to air dry, and solar dehydrators can be utilized for both herbs and foods from garden.

We would like to incorporate vermiculture into our farm practice as well, creating a worm farm that will enrich the soils of the farm, and producing extra worms and worm casings to be sold and shared with the community to enrich backyard gardens.

We are currently registered with the state of Colorado to grow Industrial Hemp on our farm and will plant our first crop in Spring of 2014. We will save the seeds and sell the fiber and or oil from the harvest, or use it all for organic garden compost as hemp is a great soil rejuvenater.

Richard, the foreman of the farm at Green Desert Sanctuary, is continually educating himself on sustainable eco-farming techniques and methodology and is currently studying permaculture principles in depth and hopes to attain permaculture certification within the next year. He is also studying Biodynamic principles with plans to incorporate such methodology into our farming practices.  He is an expert canner and teaches canning and food preservation in the fall, as a way to preserve the abundance of summer.

Here at the farm, we save seeds and source organic seeds from local sources whenever possible. We would like to put up a greenhouse structure for seed starting purposes as well as create an earthen building to serve as a root cellar/seed storage facility.

All of our building methods at Green Desert Sanctuary strive to be eco-friendly and utilize local materials and community labor whenever possible. We like to incorporate traditional building methods, such as adobe and Cob, with new and experimental earth friendly building methods such as Earthbag construction. We recycle materials and use recycled materials to build with whenever possible.

The Church:

As a church, the sanctuary offers spiritual guidance and refuge from the stresses of the modern world. Kerry, an ordained minister (AA in psychology, BA in anthropology, MA in Metaphysical Healing, certified hypnotist, NLP practitioner, Shamanic practiioner), offers counseling and energy healing online and in person at the church. As an artist and freelance writer, Kerry understands the power of creativity in one’s personal life, and allows opportunities for creative expression at the church. Kerry is continually educating herself on healing techniques as well as spiritual counseling methodologies, believing that good health encompasses mind, body and spirit, and that creativity of self allows the creation of a better life and a better world.

The church will offer ceremonies and celebrations that include and focus on creative expression and honoring and healing our Mother Earth.

In the future, we hope to build several small guest cabins that will serve as staff residences and retreat locations for individuals seeking a place of peace and introspection.

Kerry is interested in various healing and spiritual techniques and traditions, as well as energy ideas, and envisions building a pyramid on site to help protect the farm as well as allow energy to be funneled on site for healing purposes. A labyrinth is also in the plans for a spiritual center that encompasses many healing traditions that seek to holistically cure people and allow them to discover their connections to each other and to Mother Earth.